Political Correctness around the world and its stifling of liberty and sense. Chronicling a slowly developing dictatorship Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Why do men avoid marriage?

Katherine Feeney's comments below are of course just another iteration of a familar cry from women in their 30s. NONE of them seem to realize that current divorce laws would deter any reasonably-informed man from marriage. The laws make forming a new family after a divorce a matter of extreme financial difficulty in many cases. Women who want men to "commit" should be agitating for divorce laws that are less destructive to men -- but don't hold your breath waiting for it.

I have been married and amicably divorced four times so am not speaking from sour grapes. I have not suffered but the stories of those who have are legion

Why are men around my age so reluctant to tie the knot?

Several women I know – all around 30 – are beginning to question the wisdom of the wedding ultimatum. "Either you propose to me by Christmas or we're quits, pal," they say. "We've been together long enough now, it's 'I do' or die.”

They wonder what’s holding up their husbands-to-be. They’re all in long-term, apparently loving relationships. Isn't marriage the next logical step?

Variously, they decide it's not their man, but the men he hangs out with. The single lads; lads who love a night out, aren’t 'shackled' with a ball and chain, and who make fun of supine surrender under his missus's thumb. These are the boy wonders who won't ever 'grow up'.

(Note how marriage is still aligned with maturity. Is a ring really the sign of a more developed individual?)

On that idea, I recently had a conversation with a close man-friend of mine. He may be described as the definitive leader of Lost Boys. At least, he might have been, were it not for the new Wendy-lady in his life. Suddenly, the serial playmaker had found a reason to stop flying and settle down. His band of boys didn't really understand. That was hard. Could he overcome their derision and 'man-up' to marriage?

"I think my boyfriend will get over his friends and we'll get there eventually," a girlfriend, in a different-but-like situation told me recently. "But I think the longer we leave it, the harder it becomes."

This is because of two things, she thinks. One: the diminishing chances his single friends will find a lady of their own and break-apart the dude squad. Two: the increased likelihood their friends, who are already married, will divorce.

Her points are somewhat valid. Based on Australian marriage statistics, there are roughly two 'peak' periods for meeting a life partner. The median age for first marriage sits at around 30 for both men and women (or 29 for men and 27 for women), so the years preceding the big three-zero are optimal match-making time. Then there’s the so-called 'second round' stretch, when a surge of newly single divorcees hit the market. Given most marriages that end in divorce tend to do so after eight to nine years, round two begins at around 36.

What the above fails to mention, of course, is that the number of births outside marriage is rising along with the age of the mothers (interestingly their median age is around the same that for first-time brides), and the crude marriage rate is declining as de facto co-habitation rates are rising. This doesn't suggest that couples comprising a peer group are just as likely to be married as they are de facto, with or without children, but it does suggest a variety of relationship options are presented to people with increasing regularity.

So in one sense, the reasoning that men are putting off marriage because they've seen the broken or bad marriages of their formerly 'free and single' mates is flawed; they may be less inclined to propose marriage because they’ve seen their mates shacked up in circumstances less official which are just as satisfying (if not more).

But then you read articles like this, tellingly titled I was a "male spinster", and you're reminded just how locked in to this marriage ideal we really are. Yes, even blokes. Fact remains; marriage remains our chief expression of love. It is closely linked with an ever expanding scholarship on the attainment of happiness. Not only is this strong reason to bring forward marriage equality, but it's a good reminder to anyone in a relationship treading around the edges of eternal commitment to talk about it, and resolve to abide by the outcome.

Mr Davies made the claim as he spoke out against David Cameron’s plans to allow same-sex couples to marry, including in some churches. Mr Davies, the MP for Monmouth, said the plan was “barking mad” and would cost the Conservative Party many of its traditional supporters.

In an interview with BBC Wales, he went on to say that “most parents” would prefer their children not to be homosexual.

He said: "I think most people are very tolerant and have no problem at all if people are gay but, and I hate to say this in a way because I expect it's going to cause controversy, but I think most parents would prefer their children not to be gay, knowing most parents want grandchildren if nothing else."

Some Conservative advocates of the same-sex marriage plan is an essential part of changing the party’s image in the eyes of some voters, who regard Tories as intolerant.

Critics of Mr Cameron’s plans say that they will actually bring the party few new votes while alienating a much larger number of its existing backers.

Mr Davies said: “We're going to lose a large number of very loyal activists who've gone out and campaigned for us over the years and who don't like this idea, so politically it's barking mad”

He said that existing laws allowing same-sex couples to have civil partnerships could be changed to ensure full equality without going as far as church weddings. “I really don't know why we need to go ahead with this at all.”

In a large part of this country, it is against the law to fly the Union Flag from government buildings for 348 days of the year. This has been so since the year 2000. As a special treat, it can be flown for the other 17 days. The rest of the time the flagpole stays bare.

The place where this law operates is Northern Ireland. I wonder how much longer we shall be able to fly our national flag in the rest of the United Kingdom, or even how much longer that flag will exist at all.

I think this is a shocking fact. I am one of the few British journalists who bothered to read the so-called ‘Good Friday’ Agreement under which this country capitulated to the gangsters of the Provisional IRA, under American pressure.

I know that we released hundreds of grisly criminals, destroyed our security apparatus and withdrew the Army in return for various unsigned and unenforceable promises from Sinn Fein and the IRA.

But even I did not know that this was one of its effects. Our national flag, you see, might offend someone. That is also the excuse for its recent removal from Belfast City Hall, which has led to so much bitterness and turmoil in that city.

But the reality is this. You haul down your flag when you surrender. And it was a surrender. I was amused to see that Mrs Hillary Clinton, that nasty hard Leftist now aiming for the White House, had her vote-winning visit to Northern Ireland spoiled by the flag riots on Friday.

How can you have riots and peace? The great pretence, that giving in to organised crime brings peace, was for once exposed. Northern Ireland’s poor and weak have never been so subject to intimidation and gangsterism, and I wonder if I will live to see the (sadly inevitable) day when Irish troops are putting down Orange riots on the Protestant Shankill Road, probably caused by illegal displays of the old Union Flag. Peace, indeed.

The squalid history of this event is a warning we refuse to heed and which is barely known here. I saw it happen, in Washington DC, astonished by the brusque and scornful treatment of my country by a nation I had foolishly seen as an ally.

I remember one very senior White House official letting slip to me that she thought of Britain as a sort of Serbia, just another place to intervene in, as Syria is now. I have laughed at the phrase ‘Special Relationship’ ever since.

I followed Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams round the USA, as this coffin-faced apologist for violence and terror was feted and adulated by Americans who would have shrunk from him had he spoken for any other cause but the Irish one.

I annoyed him so much with my inconvenient questions that he publicly said I should be ‘decommissioned’ and – on the one occasion we were ever alone together – showed me his less diplomatic, less humorous side.

What was this about? Mrs Clinton’s husband Bill needed working-class Roman Catholic votes to win the White House, votes his party had lost by backing abortion.

So he discovered the Irish cause, about which he knew little and (I suspect) cared less. He also took a lot of Irish-American campaign money. In 1993, Irish America, which these days means some very big business, tired of waiting for results and demanded action.

And so he acted, and so we were forced to make a shameful peace with the IRA, and haul down our flag over part of our own territory.

By the time the whole thing’s finished, St Patrick’s Cross will have to come out of that flag, and the harp will depart from the Royal Standard.

I think that when countries suffer defeats, they should admit to them and grieve over them, not pretend they have won. That way lie more defeats and more humiliations.

The behavior of the western media can only be described as cowardly. That news is not going to surprise any honest, fair-minded person. Anyone can see the glaring spinelessness in their reporting (or lack thereof) on the beleaguered freedom-loving souls in Egypt today.

When thousands of people demonstrated against President Mubarak in January 2011, all major western media outlets sent reporters to Egypt, where they reported day and night. It was mostly inaccurate and biased, but at least they were reporting.

Now that an Islamist government—which was falsely installed by the military council—is in power, there is deafening silence. As even more young, educated democracy seekers are wounded and killed than in the Revolution of 2011, the media still cannot be lured from its hiding places.

Even after the Islamist President Morsi declared his dictatorship, western media said nothing. Well, nothing except for the occasional comment to support him and his push for total control—all the poor guy needs is the power to cleanse Egypt of the vestiges of the Mubarak regime. The media ignores the fact that government employees make up a majority of the country and can be categorized as vestiges of the Mubarak regime.

I get it: the western media is scared. Most, if not all, are intimidated and fearful of Islamists. But no one buys their claim that they only fear being accused of Islamophobia. They really fear for their lives, and for their profits. And that fear is the root of their cowardice.

When the Director General of the BBC was asked why they had tried so hard to not offend Muslims, especially when they had often treated Christians with scorn, his honest answer was: a Christian has “broad shoulders” and can take it, but an Islamist may complain by saying, “I am loading my AK47.”

As the power of fear and intimidation grows worldwide, the slippery slope of appeasement will make the leftist western media obsolete as a news source. An uninformed public will remain blissfully ignorant until it is too late to stop the media from becoming a dangerous tool in the Islamist’s pocket.

Already it feels like I’m living back in Egypt during the 1960s when most of the nation’s media got their cues from Nasser. They would attack whom they knew Nasser wanted attacked. And they would remain silent on certain deadly issues if they knew he wanted them to close their eyes.

Today’s protestors represent the best of Egypt. They are Muslim men and Christian men. They are veiled women and unveiled women. They are united in a love for their country and disdain for what their Islamist president is doing to it.

Unlike western media, they have shown courage time after time. They protested last year at enormous risk to their lives. Now they protest again make sure their courage has not been for nothing.

But Morsi is an Islamist, and the media fears the Islamists. And Morsi is President Obama’s ally, and the media loves the U.S. president. That leaves the protestors out in the cold with the TV cameras turned off.

The people of the West need to learn from their beleaguered freedom-loving Egyptian compatriots who are shedding their blood for true democracy.

The people of the West need to wake up from their slumber, follow the example of the Egyptian protestors, and rise up against the deliberate deception of the western media.

It is time for the people of the West—for all truth-loving people—to boycott the cowards and support the courageous.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

1 comment:

W. Smith
said...

With regard to the piece on marriage, who'd want to settle down with the average British woman of today? Like most Western women, British women have lapped up feminism en masse and despise the idea that a woman's natural calling might actually be different from a man's ("gender is a social construct", etc.). Your article on how few British women are housewives is revealing. And whilst women in Britain might say that they'd like to spend time with their kids, this is more lip-service to the idea of motherhood, than anything --- in practice they are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices, and resolutely refuse to abandon feminism (regardless of how miserable it has made them).

There's also the unstated reality that a sane man doesn't really want a wife who's apt to have already slept with half the parish, likely thinks herself cleverer than he is (she has the paper to prove it), and who seeks to occupy pretty much the same role as he does. He might have sex with such a creature but knows that putting all his eggs in so poor a basket is foolish. But then no-one will tell these women that their Marxoid "life choices" are making them unattractive as marriage prospects. That would be "judgemental".

Background

Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.

I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.

I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass

Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And the command in Leviticus 20:13 that homosexuals should be put to death makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in Romans chapter 1 that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil

The homosexuals of Gibeah set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties

Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion

Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"

Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”

Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."

Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".

One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.

It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.

A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."

The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin

"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms.

You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE

On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds

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